After 6 years on a 1080p monitor, I finally made the upgrade to 1440p. And wow is it an amazing difference.
What monitor?
I splurged on the Asus XG27AQMR (jesus christ I hate monitor nomenclature). The goal was to go big and endure until microLED becomes affordable, so I wanted to make a decent investment. This important specs are:
- 27 inches
- 300 Hz refresh rate
- ~3 ms response time
I intentionally avoided OLED, as I am certain my usage will cause it to burn in before I upgrade again. I’m happy to see OLED starting to dominate the monitor market, but I don’t want burn in or non-RGB subpixel layouts. I didn’t choose 4K because the smallest panel size is 32 inches, way too big for me. Also, I’d rather use my 6800 XT to max out 1440p rather than compromise on 4K. HDR was also a skip, because those monitors are either too expensive or are OLED.
Monitor availability is pretty meh in Canada, so either I had to spend at least $500 more for the Asus flagship PG27AQN (please fix your monitor names Asus), or compromise for an older LG that came out in 2019. The AQMR was an okay compromise; definitely pricey, but if I’m going to keep this thing for at least 6 - 7 years then it’s not too bad.
Differences from my old monitor
The monitor I was using before was some Dell one that I don’t know the name of. It was 1080p 60 Hz, and also 27 inches.
Pixel density
This is the biggest difference. 1440p has roughly 78% more pixels than 1080p, and it shows clearly. The denser pixels smooth rough edges, makes text look like vectors instead of blocks, and games look significantly more detailed.
One potential downside is the non-integer scaling between 1080p and 1440p. If you watch a 1080p video on a 1440p display, it might look blurry. That’s because 1440/1080 = 4/3, so you don’t get a clear whole number upscale. A 4K display is basically four 1080p displays put together, so each pixel can be mapped to 4 pixels on the 4K display. That’s why 1080p on a 4K screen looks fine, but resolutions like 1440p can’t do that.
But even if some content might be blurrier, this is a rare exception. Plus, you won’t notice the blur significantly when not scrutinizing. I came from a 27 inch 1080p screen, which has low pixel density. 25 inch seems to be the sweetspot for 1080p, but even then a 27 inch 1440p screen will look sharper. I think it’s the ideal combination of pixel density and screen size.
Responsiveness
I regret not using a high refresh rate display earlier. Every time I went to a computer hardware store and tried HRR monitors, I would feel amazed by simply dragging a window across the desktop. Now I can do that and with a mind-boggling 300 Hz instead of 144.
60 Hz now actually feels slow, genuinely. Games look like they’re running at 90% speed, animations feel like they’re causing frame stutters, and mouse movement feels sluggish. I played a game locked at 60 FPS and genuinely thought my computer was lagging when it was actually only very lightly loaded.
I’m pretty sure I would have said 144 Hz was also incredibly fast, which might cause you to think I wasted money on an overkill screen. To that, my justification is that I deliberately went overkill. 300 Hz is only really practical for competitive esports, which I don’t play much. But still, there is a difference in pixel response time in higher tier panels. Also, I didn’t have much of a choice because the Canadian market (physical and digital) is way worse than the US.
Screen coating
The Dell monitor from before used a semi-glossy coating. Despite being low resolution and slow, the colours on that display were very nice. That was the feature I like the best.
The Asus monitor has a typical matte coating. I definitely like semi-glossy more. Matte isn’t bad by any means, it’s not like the image quality is ruined. But glossy is simply better than matte for colours. That’s why every TV is glossy. Matte is used because it doesn’t reflect light like a mirror, but that also hinders the display itself.
Matte vs. glossy is a whole different debate though, so I’ll end it here. Overall, it’s fine. I prefer glossy, but can tolerate matte.
Imaginary future upgrade
The year is 20XX. Every display manufacturer produces microLED panels to levels of perfection. Because of this, the market winner depends solely on product merit and price. The marketing metagame has evolved to ridiculous levels due to it being the only remaining factor to decide sales.
That’s the dream: cheap microLED. It’s OLED without the burn in, non-RGB subpixel, and brightness limitations. It’s basically the holy grail of display tech. I’m certain this is the next step after OLED, and the technology is developing.
It’s still in infancy though, microLED is only “available” for 110 inch TVs and they cost around $100K USD. It’ll take years for them to appear in 4K TVs, and maybe over 15 years for desktop monitors to get microLED. Until then, I’m going to try my best and last with 1440p LCD. Who knows, maybe a half upgrade to FALD LCD or durable OLED will be possible in the meanwhile. I still want to try HDR sometime in the future and have OLED-level blacks on a monitor.